/lit/ - Literature

Hemingway used a shotgun. Consider it.

The key is to stop trying period.

Well, if you live in the US, we're just finishing up winter. I can't write ANYTHING in winter. Too fucking dead.

Write something else. Honestly, if a piece isn't working for you, set it down. After looking at a work for too long I've found that letting it lie fallow helps, so I can come back to it with fresh eyes.

writers block is just the fear of writing something stupid
it can all be fixed in revision
just do it

>>439039

I'm usually the opposite, weirdly.

A lot of people suggest booze, I find sleep deprivation plus caffeine to get me going.

I ride the bus. I dunno, it's just really relaxing.

Writers block is the willing of write while your brain isn't even wanting to work.

Writers block is like trolls. Don't try and mess with it, just ignore it and it will go away.

I just stop writing for a while, mostly a few weeks to a month like I am right now. Usually in between these times I don't have to worry about making out character development and scheduling my chapters, and just letting the ideas come to me with no strings attached. It's bad to force yourself to write when you don't want to, and being frustrated over the lack of being unable to write is just that. I'd compare it to a sore muscle, you wear it out and then it hurts, rest for a while and then it's fine.

Writer's block is a load of bullshit. It does not exist. Man up, sit down, and get to work.

"I don't believe in [writer's block]. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?"

- Philip Pullman

>>439101

This post is so wrong, I don't even know where to start.

You should be writing every day and feeling guilty when you can't. The only way to make your fiction come naturally is to practice - like any other skill - and by forcing yourself to work, it becomes easier. Write when you don't want to, and keep writing past when you want to stop. Your breaks ought to be other types of writing, other works, but letting your creativity lie fallow is a myth. It just atrophies.

I like to take a walk or something relaxing like that. Let me creativity regenerate.

OP here.

Hasn't rained for a month, and rain on the windows really, really helps.

Hell, even the smell of rain, the dirty smell, really helps, really relaxes me.

>>439103

This is how I've always felt, but I'm at a point where every time I finish a page, I read it back, and it just feels like trash. This is normal, sometimes I get off to a bad start, give it a rethink, come back to it, fine, but it's been a month of this.

It's not that I'm not writing, it's that I'm not writing anything I'm happy about.

cough medicine
the whole thing

>>439103

No, no, it's a real thing.

But it's not just writing. It's psychological. It has a lot to do with your mental state. I've heard of professional drivers who experience issues with their performance during races when under high stress. I've heard of surgeons getting shaky hands from pressure. I'm saying, though, you just need to chill out, smoke weed, and your performance will come back. Or you have shit in your life that's bothering you. Take care of it. Fix it, and then come back to writing.

>>439103
I'd be prone to agree to that statement if I hadn't read his work and thought he was trash.

I just read a little more, play some video games, watch a little TV, maybe go back read some of my other work. Sooner or later I can get back to writing.

>>439149
Sometimes that's how it goes OP. But if you at least get the words out there on paper, you can go back and edit them. They're not going to come out perfectly, not even in the best of times.

Yeah, as others are saying, it's all about maintaining discipline and sacking up. Here's what I've been doing lately, which makes for a really fun but insane book:

Every time shit isn't flowing, I abandon a scene and start writing something else with other characters from the book, and I just try to make it as crazy, gut-punching, or otherwise entertaining as possible. I start a scene thinking, if I turned on the tv, and it was playing the very start of this scene, what would make me absolutely incapable of changing the channel? And then I write that. Just go for it, and don't be afraid of your ideas. If it's too much, you can always go back and delete it, and ninety times out of a hundred, it isn't too much, it's just more awesome than what your inhibited, pussyfied ass would normally write.

I smoke some pot, read some stuff to stimulate my mind, then listen to music and write my brains out.

What I do is I think about something, anything at all, and then from whatever it is, Ill relate anything to it in quick succession, without thinking. Does that make sense? It's just Basically that I let my brain relax and have a long stream of conciousness. I dont even write it down, but it makes my imagination work and usually helps me get over my writer's block.

I also suggest just writing anything at all. Dont stop just beause you feel that what you're writing is bad; push on. when you cant write anything else at all, dont read it over. Write something else or walk away, but dont read it over till tomorrow. If you read it immediately after youll get even more down and not want to write even more.

best of luck!

>>439152

Truth.

It exists in all sports too. Pro golfers suddenly develop the "yips" and can't put worth shit, catchers suddenly can't throw back to the mound, and we all know what happened to Chuck Knoblauch.

Because the trouble is entirely mental, the best thing to do is to completely stop attempting the activity in question and even that might not be enough. You need to chill out, relax, and not even THINK about whatever you have blocked. The more you fret and the more you push, the bigger a block you're creating.

Go get drunk, go get laid, go on a 3 day hike, do anything except writing and don't even think about writing.

>>439209

Yeah, in Football you have guys forcing the ball, fumbling, and doing dumb shit when they ordinarily play well. It's universal. Nerves are bad. Relaxation is important.

Whatever, don't coddle this faggot by pretending he has an actual writing problem. I'm willing to bet he isn't churning out 2000 words a day and just hit a brick wall. His problem is he tries to surf 4chan and be a writer at the same time. Go get a pen and a pad of fucking paper and don't come back here until you've made something decent out of it.

>>439229
You seem charming.

>>439235

I may not sound very nice, but it's because I actually do want OP to keep writing and make something out of it. Unlike most writers, I want everyone who has even the inkling of a desire to write to pursue it, and not give up. Writer's block is the best excuse to go play your xbox because the words aren't flowing, and I'd rather be part of a generation of kickass writers than a bunch of overweight team deathmatch champions.

>>439229

I sort of agree with this. Asking for specific advice is alright, but "How do I write more?" should be met with "By not being on 4chan."

>>439253

Point taken, catch you chaps later.

I always find that writers block arises when you are unsure how to proceed or write the next part of your story. Nothing you write seems to work, if this happens you're probably to close to your work.

Sometimes just taking a few days to stop and think about what your writing, and taking time to remember why you originally wanted to write what your writing and what your overall vision was (in the middle of a project in the midst of things it can be easy to loose sight of this in all the details and become convinced that things have to be a certain way). I've tried the suggestions of just keep on blindly writing no matter what before and found that if something is not working in your story, it's not working and blindly writing is just going to produce trash. Sometimes to solve big hitches and hang ups in your story where you are unsure how to proceed you need to put some real time and thought into them and not just grab for as many ideas as fast as possible when you blindly write and try to solve it almost by brute force. Go for a walk, listen to some music, relax and reflect on your story and the relationships between all the characters and elements. Do you really need that part? how does it fit in with the rest of the story? could you approach it a different way? If worse comes to worse you could write it out badly or skip ahead and continue on and then go back to it when your story is finished as then you might realize that you don't need it at all or once you have the entire story down you realize how that scene should really go and can rewrite it.

>>439024

Let Brian Eno help with Oblique Strategies.

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html

>>439024
When I had writer's block, I'd write something else. Anything else, no matter how shitty. Also went on long runs at night.

I got a little bit of Writers block right now. But it's mostly because I'm working on a dozen different things and i need to start focusing on one of them. But my best cure for writers block is watching lots and lots of films, since I'm a screenwriter..

>>439346
and I bet today you still write shit you don't care about and take long runs in the night because you can not stand the thoughts of self-ridicule when in bed

>>440074

Change a character's gender.

>>440162
Ooh this is a pretty radical idea. I see how it could kickstart you in a completely different direction. Excellent work.

>>440164

Ta! Wish I could say it were my idea. Wes Anderson's personal assistant told me Wes would do it sometimes.

>>440189
Well now we all know who to go if we a need a manuscript slipped to someone important.

There is no such thing as writer's block.

You just lack creativity.

>>440228
You're so helpful. I'm glad you decided to contribute to this thread.

>>440220

Pffft. Me first, mate. I've been writing this screenplay since 2008!

Sit down and write some random stream of consciousness bollocks, even if you start with "I'm sitting on a chair writing this shit because I can't fucking write anything else..." it's better than nothing.

For me the hardest part of overcoming writer's block is getting going. So I start in the middle of what i'm writing and then go back to the start when i've built up some momentum.